I have reported a gather bot numerous times over the past 2 months and I see him out there every day. He is on the opposing faction so I just keep killing them over and over, while I wait for a GM to respond/investigate the complaint. I have camped this idiot for over 2 hours now, giving him res sickness 4 times and STILL no GM. Funny how I can tell someone in a bg to [Removed] and get a ban within hours, yet people get away with cheating constantly even AFTER numerous tickets have been submitted. What is the major malfunction here, Gump?!

Funny how I can tell someone in a bg to [Removed] and get a ban within hours, yet people get away with cheating constantly even AFTER numerous tickets have been submitted.

There is also a bit of a difference between verifying profanity and verifying if a person is using a program or other exploitative means. If a report is generated that someone used inappropriate language it is a simple matter of looking at the chat logs to verify what was said. It is pretty black and white, either the word/phase is there or it is not.

With botting or other exploitative practices it isn't as evident. Yes, in many cases you can visually inspect a character's actions and make a fairly accurate determination that something is amiss, and they may be botting, but a visual inspection doesn't really hold up over time.

Whenever we take action against an account, there is an appeals process. During that review we check to see if the original findings were accurate. A note that says "I saw him, he was botting" from a Game Master is not really the type of data that can be used.

Those who create these programs do what they can do remain undetected. Our goal is to find how they are doing what they are and either break the ability to use it or develop a way to automatically detect and/or block the behavior.

In turn, whenever we start to take action against those using this type of exploitation the first order of business is for those who created the program to figure out how we found them. Which they often do fairly quickly and they will make adjustments to program so that they can hide their activities and the process begins anew. The goal is to maximize the impact that will be made. So while we may action on an individual basis, the benefit of hitting them en masse can be far greater.

Botters do not make Blizzard money. 99 times out of 100 they are stolen accounts on stolen credit cards. What do you think the credit card companys do when they find out their cards have been stolen? They get that money back. Blizzard loses money from botters.

Indeed. The accusation that we allow this type of exploitative practice because it makes money is not new, someone tries to make that point from time to time. It is no more viable this time than at any time before. Since we have covered this before I'm going to quote part of a previous response I made.

It is a ridiculous notion that we would allow an activity to continue simply because it brings in a subscription. We value the integrity of this game and we do everything in our power to protect it. That does not mean a permanent solution to the issue is readily available though. We take what actions we can on verified cases.

Even if you were to think of us only as a business, and not the company of passionate gamers that we are, you should know that in the long run allowing such activities to continue only drives people away from the game. If nothing was ever done about such issues that would likely only lead to losing more subscriptions than we would retain by allowing it to continue.

The fact is, most have a very limited outlook for the whole situation, since they can only see what impacts them directly. They do not always recognize when one issue has been resolved because they are already looking at the next.

We are acutely aware of these activities and on an individual level we ask that you report those characters that you believe to be botting. Though immediate action may not always be possible, these matters are sent up for investigation and help to deal with more than just the one character you may see. If you see the same person after a week or so you can submit another petition to make sure that the matter was properly forwarded.